Personally, I'd never stand for a substantial mystery rollover. What are you saving the money for?? If a PTO has several thousands of dollars in their account summer after summer, you might as well take that money and stick it under a mattress for all the good it's doing your kids.

The only exception: a known, approved long-term saving program for a big project like a playground.

That said, we will probably end this year with nearly $10,000 in the bank even though we've spent all our budgeted allocations and then some...just had a good fundraising year and an surprisingly profitable spring carnival. In our specific situation, we need a large carryover this year because we are doing a new program early in the fall that requires us to spend $4k this summer.

If you have a large balance in late spring, it can be difficult to spend it responsibly and quickly in May or June. You don't want to waste if for the sake of spending it. Can you add one more easy family night? Or pay for one more assembly? Or provide an ice cream treat for every kid on the last day of school?

If you're debating the amount of carryover, I would estimate how much you need to create startup materials and hold a welcome back event before your first fundraiser. That's how much $ should be carried over. Otherwise, spend it on today's parents/kids.

I am a new PTO treasurer and am trying to find a compromise between the members who want a big safety net and other members who think all money raised should be allocated to an expenditure. Has anyone experienced PTO members upset because all the money that is given to your organization is not used but just rolls over to another school year. They want to see the money they help raised spent for a specific need. For those PTO's that have an category for rolling money over to the next year (not the carryover catagory), what is the name of the category, and how is a mystery category recieved by PTO members?

What we do is 'appropriate' surplus monies from this years budget to specific line items on the following years budget. This is voted upon when the final budget is presented. The appropriated monies are reco'd separately and don't mix in the budget, at least not on paper. This year we appropriated 5 line items which totalled $17k. That left us with 14K excess surplus to be spent on the school as end of year gifts.
And just because you are a 501(c)3 does not mean you have to spend down to zero each year. What 'non-profit' means is that no individuals can receive remuneration for services that they provide to the organization or that no individual can remove monies from the organization as profit.

WOW, $70,000. That's great. We make about $12,000. I think it's a misconception that being a 501c3 you have to spend all your money. But you can carry over how ever much you want. I believe you should carry over extra money so you have a start-up fund at the beginning of the yr. or if you are saving for a big ticket item like playground equipment. Good luck!

Our total income this year was over 70,000. Our bi-laws state the income earned this year is to be spent next year. We have an account for the carryover for what we don't spend so the budget is in balance. Some say since we are a 501 c 3 we need to spend everything but some of us think we should hold back a percentage as a "rainy day". Should we with hold a percentage of the income we made this year? A percentage of what we spent this year and what percent should it be. This is my first year on the budget committee and I have been nominated for the Treasurer position for next year. I don't want to be stuck in the middle of the year with no money extra money and have a huge expenditure come up.

We spread every penny we have on hand at start of the year, plus all we intend to earn (our net income) over all our budget categories (about 25 different ones) so that our budget balances. However...one of our expense categories is called "carryover" and we also have "miscellaneous" categories for each of our 3 major expense groups. So, in this way, we build contingency into our plan, but still show a balanced budget.

Our bylaws require that we carryover at least $2,000, but we have historically carried over much more than that. Not by intent, but because some budgets don't get used up by year-end, or a late fundraiser is more successful than expected. A larger carryover allows us to do an eventealry in the year, before we do a big fundraiser.